Neural mechanism underlying cognitive operations in emotional learning systems

在这一年里，该项目取得了重大进展。在大鼠行为学实验过程中，完成了钙显像仪的全部数据采集。并对记录的数据进行了二进制译码、统计计算、主成分分析等处理。我发现，预区的神经元对条件性感觉刺激有显着的反应，这表明推测的恐惧记忆和原始恐惧记忆。与没有推测恐惧记忆的大鼠相比，有恐惧推理的大鼠有更多的神经元对指示推断恐惧记忆的条件性感觉刺激和原始恐惧记忆做出反应。这些共反应神经元可能在厌恶记忆和相关推断记忆的整合中发挥重要作用。同时，投射到杏仁核的预感神经元对条件性刺激表现出更特异的反应，表明推测的恐惧记忆，而不是原始的恐惧记忆，这与前人的光遗传学结果一致。当推断记忆和厌恶之间的关系被分离时，对无条件刺激和感觉刺激都有反应的神经元减少。这些结果说明了大鼠大脑认知系统操纵推测情绪表达形成的机制。这一结果对开发人类厌恶障碍的新疗法具有一定的参考价值。

In this year, the project had significant progress. I finished all the data collection of calcium imaging during the behavioral experiments of rats. I also analyzed the recorded data by binary decoding, statistics calculation, PCA trajectory and so on. I found that neurons in prelimbic area significantly responded to conditioned sensory stimulus indicating inferred fear memory and original fear memory. Compared with rats without inferred fear memory, rats with fear inference had more neurons responding to both conditioned sensory stimulus indicating inferred fear memory and original fear memory. These co-responsive neurons may play important role in the integration of aversive memory and associated inferred memory. At the same time, prelimbic neurons projecting to amygdala showed more specific response to conditioned stimulus indicating inferred fear memory rather than original fear memory, which is consistent with previous optogenetics results. When the relationship between inferred memory and aversiveness being dissociated, there was reduction of neurons responding to both unconditioned stimulus and sensory stimulus. All these results illustrate the mechanism of cognitive system of rats brain manipulate the formation of inferred emotional expression. The results were valuable to develop new therapy for aversiveness disorder in human.